{"id":5168,"date":"2017-10-06T14:22:10","date_gmt":"2017-10-06T14:22:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2017\/10\/06\/how-can-a-simple-god-know-contingent-truths\/"},"modified":"2017-10-06T14:22:10","modified_gmt":"2017-10-06T14:22:10","slug":"how-can-a-simple-god-know-contingent-truths","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2017\/10\/06\/how-can-a-simple-god-know-contingent-truths\/","title":{"rendered":"How Can a Simple God Know Contingent Truths?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Chris M writes, <\/span><\/p>\n

\n
If God simply is his act of existence, and if his existence is necessary, how can God have knowledge of contingent truths? What I mean is that it is possible for God to do other than he does (say not create, or create different things.) If he did differently – say, if the world didn't exist – his knowledge would be different in content. Yet God is supposed to be a single act of being, purely simple and identical across all possible worlds. God's essence just is his act of necessary existence, knowing and willing. It seems God's knowledge of contingents thus is an accident in him. But God can have no accidents. How then can he, as actus purus<\/em> and necessary existence, have properties (such as knowing x or willing x) which he may not have had ?<\/span><\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n
That  is a clear statement of the difficulty.  As I see it, the problem is essentially one of solving the following aporetic tetrad:<\/span><\/div>\n
\n
\n

1) God is simple: there is nothing intrinsic to God that is distinct from God.<\/span><\/p>\n

2) God knows some contingent truths.<\/span><\/p>\n

3) Necessarily, if God knows some truth t, then (i) there an item intrinsic to God such as a mental act or a belief state (ii) whereby God knows t.<\/span><\/p>\n

4) God exists necessarily.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n

The classical theist, Aquinas for example, is surely committed to (1), (2), and (4). The third limb of the tetrad, however, is extremely plausible. And yet the four propositions are collectively inconsistent: they cannot all be true.<\/span><\/div>\n
 <\/span><\/div>\n
For example, it is contingently true that Socrates published nothing and contingently true that God knows this truth.  He presumably knows it in virtue of being in some internal mental state such as a belief state or some state analogous to it. But this state, while contingent, is intrinsic to God.  The divine simplicity, however, requires that there be nothing intrinsic to God that is distinct from God.  Since God exists necessarily, as per (4), the belief state exists necessarily, which contradicts the fact that it must exist contingently.<\/span><\/div>\n
 <\/div>\n
I discuss this problem here<\/a>, and in nearby posts in the Divine Simplicity<\/a> category.<\/span> <\/span><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Chris M writes,  If God simply is his act of existence, and if his existence is necessary, how can God have knowledge of contingent truths? What I mean is that it is possible for God to do other than he does (say not create, or create different things.) If he did differently – say, if … Continue reading “How Can a Simple God Know Contingent Truths?”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[141,143,353],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5168","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-divine-simplicity","category-god","category-knowledge"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5168","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5168"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5168\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5168"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5168"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5168"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}